“That means ‘headstrong,’” said Aengas. “It may have been only a nickname, but he has certainly lived up to it.”

It was a small enough jest, but Tiamak was not in the mood to be amused. In fact, almost nothing about the task pleased him, although he supposed it was a good thing to have something else to think on for a little while beside the endlessly puzzling, frequently terrifying Treatise on the Aetheric Voices.

“Just ahead, masters,” said the shuffling jailer, a man almost as large as Lord Aengas and only slightly more nimble. “Don’t know why we’re still keeping him. They should have had him doing the rope dance. Murdering poor old Lord Eolair . . .”

“The count survived and was able to ride out on his horse the next day, for which we are all grateful,” said Tiamak. “In any case, I’m told this man is quite mad.”

“Mad? Could be. But we could do with a few less mad ones like him. You don’t put a collar on a mad dog, and you don’t keep a fellow like this alive.”

Tiamak frowned at this easy conclusion. “If he had been hanged already, then we could not come to question him.”

“Well, then, I’m sure you know best, my lords,” said the jailer. “Still, what can you learn from a madman?”

What indeed? Tiamak wondered. After all, his wife Thelía had spoken to the fellow at length while the royal company traveled across the Frostmarch, but she had still been shocked to learn of Riggan’s attempt on the lord steward’s life. Tiamak himself thought it was doubtful this aged scullion could be a spy for the Hernystiri throne, let alone an assassin directed all the way from the Taig, but after the murderous attack on the Sitha envoy and now another against Count Eolair, he could understand why Simon was taking nothing for granted.

•   •   •

The prisoner was a small man, not much bigger than Tiamak himself, though stockier. He had been badly shaved by his jailers, which gave his head a crooked appearance, and was also bruised from the struggle in which he had been captured, but he did not seem to have been too badly harmed.

When Aengas questioned him his responses sounded reasonable, though Tiamak could not understand the words. “What does he say?”

“Much, but with little sense. ‘How can I face her when we are all finally set free? I failed her! She summoned me!’ and other complaints of that nature. In short, someone summoned him, but he failed to attend them.”

“‘How can I face her’ . . . ?” Tiamak shook his head. “Who does he mean?”

Aengas laughed. “I speak Hernystiri, my friend, not the language of madness, whatever some may say about me.”

Tiamak turned to the prisoner. “Riggan, I am Lord Tiamak. Can you understand me? I want to talk to you about what happened. Who summoned you?”

He shook his head violently, but when he spoke again his voice was mild.

“He says only that he has failed her,” Aengas translated.

“Her, her—and this is not the first time he has spoken of ‘her.’” Tiamak frowned. “He told someone else it was the Morriga who spoke to him. Ask him if he still believes that.”

“The Morriga?” Aengas was clearly surprised. “The Crow Mother?”

“Yes, he spoke of her when my wife tended him. Please, ask him.”

Riggan listened to Aengas’ questions with worried interest, then gave a long reply, at one point raising his hands over his head and gesturing to the roof of his cramped cell.

“He says she has three faces—the Summoner, the Silence, and the Mother of Tears.” Aengas paused. The jailer had leaned in to hear better, so he glared at the man until he stepped back again. “I am impressed by the madman’s knowledge of old tales,” Aengas continued, “but it all seems straightforward to me. He has foul dreams and thinks his dreams are true. And it is not unusual for people to believe the gods speak to them, whether the Morriga or Brynioch himself—King Lluth’s own daughter suffered from a madness like this, I have heard it told.”

“Perhaps, but his answer seemed longer. What else did he say?”

“I heard something about, ‘Behind her are older ones, older still, old as the rain, old as the stone.’ That must be the gods.”

The madman’s words made Tiamak itch, although he did not know why. “I am still uncertain. Ask him to name these old ones.”

Aengas gave Tiamak an odd look, but spoke to the prisoner again. Riggan, agitated, waved his hands in the air and let loose a burble of Hernystiri; Tiamak recognized a single word—duircha, or “darkness”—and his heart stumbled a little.

“He does not know their names, but he says their shadows are the light of other worlds, and that the stars are their eyes.” The factor’s wide face now creased in a frown of unease. “Tiamak, my swamp-paddling friend, where could this creature have learned such things? Could he once have been a priest or scholar? But if so, what was he doing working in the Hayholt’s kitchens?”

“A king and several high and holy knights have labored in those kitchens,” Tiamak said. “Do not underestimate the place.” But he did not feel as light-hearted as his words made him sound. “Surely that cannot be all he said, Aengas. I heard the word ‘darkness.’ What was that?”

“Ah, yes,” Aengas said. “It troubled me too. He said something like, I do not know why they speak to me or who they are, but their silent voices are the true names of darkness—” He suddenly looked not just disturbed but startled. “But hold—why does that sound familiar, dear man?”

“Because you were reading it only yesterday or the day before.” Tiamak’s heart seemed to grow cold in his chest. “‘The true name of Darkness is made of these silent voices,’ were the exact words. Do you remember them now?”

Aengas’s broad face turned a paler shade, and despite the dank air of the cell, a sheen of sweat appeared on his brow. “‘The true name of Darkness . . .’ Gods, yes, I remember it now—‘and Darkness itself is wound all through these whisperless whispers, and even a godly man may lose his wits and even his immortal soul when they call him.’ I wish at this moment I were a more religious man, Tiamak, because I could use such comfort. Those are the words of Fortis the Recluse.”

“Yes.” Tiamak spoke almost in a whisper, as if someone beside the slack-faced warder might be listening. “Straight from the pages of the Treatise. Ask the prisoner if he can read, Aengas.”

Riggan shook his head in shame. “He says he cannot,” Aengas reported.

“And I believe him. Ask him if he knows the name of Bishop Fortis.”

Again the prisoner shook his head, then spoke in a rush of words, looking more fearful by the moment. “He does not know it, and he says he is a man who loves the gods and does not wish to be burned. He did only what he was told, he said.”

“And who told him?” Tiamak asked.

“He says it was the Morriga,” said Aengas after listening to the reply. “But he says the lady of three faces whispered in his dreams for many moons, until he knew it was a true summons. He says he is not the only person who can hear her, for the whispers are grown very loud of late.” Aengas took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. “Do you know, I suddenly find myself disliking the smell and dampness of this place, friend Tiamak. I would like to leave.” He gave his bearers a command; they bent to hoist the litter.

Tiamak nodded his agreement, but he knew that what they had heard here could not be so easily left behind.

Pasevalles had finished his business for King Simon, as well as some boring but important letters of his own, but it was still more than an hour until the bells in Holy Tree Tower called him to the midday meal. He decided to take advantage of this unexpected freedom to spend some time reading in his private room at the top of the residence where no one would disturb him. But he had only made it to the top of the third floor landing before he was reminded that his secret hiding-hole was no longer entirely secret.